How did the first person accurately predict the oncoming change of weather? Of course, some would contend that no one has accurately predicted such a thing, and would scoff at the thought. Was it merely by observation?

Why did logic not overtake the attempt at prediction — of Hume’s contention that there is no such thing as a “necessary connection” between cause and effect, but merely a repetition of events that can be defied when, in the next instance, what one expected may turn out to be wrongly presumed? Or of other events — of the outcome of a contest between two teams; of great horse races, the Triple Crown, or even of Olympic events: Can accuracy of predictions be statistically enhanced by observation, analysis, careful scrutiny and always with a bit of luck included?

And in the field of medicine — is a “prognosis” the same, or similar to, a “prediction” of sorts? For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the requirements necessary in preparing, formulating and filing a Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset includes a “prediction” of sorts — a prognosis that the medical condition will last a minimum of 12 months from the date of the application.

This does not mean that a Federal or Postal worker must wait for 12 months to establish that the medical condition itself will last that long, but merely that the medical condition itself will last a minimum of 12 months from the time one applies for Federal Disability Retirement — which, as a practical matter, makes sense because it takes about the same amount of time, on average, to get an approval from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, and there would essentially be no point in filing if, upon an approval, you no longer suffer from the medical condition itself.

A “prognosis” is, indeed, a type of prediction, and most doctors will be able to provide “within a reasonable degree of medical certainty” as to the lasting effects and enduring nature of a medical condition, based upon experience, analysis and clinical encounters.

This is a perilous time we live in. Some would counter that it all depends upon one’s outlook and perspective; that for those who have an adventuresome spirit, a sense of excitement for the future, and a fearless attitude in facing challenges, such times as these are for the bold and independent-minded.

Youth, of course, has its advantages; having nothing to lose, they race blindly ahead without concerns for the consequences left behind. Nostalgia for a time gone can be infectious and wasteful; there are too many things happening in modernity to allow for reminiscences to crowd in.

This is an Age of Overload. We read about and watch popular series about a time past, of horses and buggies, of simplicity in living, and wonder how in the world did we become what we are today? Is it all a grand illusion? Were there as many problems, worries, concerns and angst-ridden days as these days? Was life ever really simple where children danced daily through fields of wildflowers during summer months of lazy and carefree memories, like wistful shadows wilting on a rainy day where no one spoke in fearful whispers beyond the day’s journey of time? Or was it always like it is today — of overload and constant flux, of working beyond hours assigned and never seeming to meet the day’s obligations or responsibilities?

Then, of course, those beset with a medical condition have an exponential effect beyond the human capacity to endure.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, where the medical condition begins to prevent the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s position, the overload that occurs because of the impediment of the medical condition itself can be overwhelming and irreconcilable.

Federal Disability Retirement may not be the most optimal solution in all circumstances, but it is often the only choice remaining. Either that, or the Federal or Postal worker who can no longer perform all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal position will have to simply endure, and often face the consequences of workplace harassment, increasing pressures and continuing deterioration of one’s medical conditions because of the added stresses.

In the end, it is this overload of stresses that defeats and destroys, and preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is the only way to avoid the inevitable results of a society burdened with overload.

Posted on September 13, 2016 by Federal Disability Retirement Attorney

Is there any good in people, anymore? Is it even relevant to distinguish between “good” and “bad”? Yes, yes – I know; it is a devious thing to entitle a piece with one concept, then begin the discussion by embracing its antonym – a device often used by newspapers, periodicals, and short story writers of the dubious set and genre of unfashionable alternatives. But more to the point: in a universe and culture where moral judgments are no longer acceptable, and where equivalence of distinctions have been concretized except by religious zealots and society’s cultish outcasts, can the contradistinctions between the two have any significance or relevance for conceptual paradigms incommensurate with prior such models (to borrow a well-worn phrase by Thomas Kuhn) in order to retain any meaningful posit?

There is an inherent acknowledgment that if we ascribe a negative principle or connotation to a word, that two things must necessarily denote a contingent precedent: First, that it is distinguishable from everything else in the universe (otherwise, if it cannot be, then everything becomes nothing, and therefore loses its efficacy of meaning); and Second, that its opposite must embrace an aura of equally virulent affirmation, lest the antonym be nothing more than a synonym of choice.

But if “goodness” is a mere societal convention constructed in the artifice of false religious histories, where idols, gods and angels once occupied now have formed a continent of mythologies no longer believed in but for those quaint societies in outlands visited by tourists who purchase trinkets for show and Instagram opportunities, then being “bad” cannot have any ascription of meaningful prose, anymore.

“Goodness” meant something, at one point; there were common threads throughout, and societal values could agree implicitly, without vocalized necessitation of explanatory expositions, and the questioning itself would bring quizzical looks of suspicion and concern, not only for the finite soul for mortality’s sake, but because to query of such self-evident devices was to presume a sort of insanity manifested against the tides of normalcy.

In modernity, of course, the antithesis is accepted: to make a moral judgment is to be intolerant, and that is the greatest crime of all. Yet, that in and of itself is an anomaly, because as sins are presumed to be no longer fashionable because of the Biblical context surrounding, so “good” and “evil” (or “badness”) are no longer acceptable terms. We cannot judge, because judging requires a prerequisite of an intolerant nature, and tolerance is the reflective definition of goodness in modernity. So, we must suffer evil in silence, and remain neutral as to the angels who visit us when misfortune arrives.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who must suffer through the employment arena knowing the hogwash of neutrality where we never judge and never appear intolerant, we witness the height of hypocrisy in the behavior of the “good” people against those with medical conditions and disabilities.

And so we have to prepare an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, because to remain at the Federal Agency or U.S. Postal Service would, again, turn the conceptual artifices upside down, where the “good” have been deemed no longer so, and the “bad” are those who seek to be accommodated, or stick around too long and irritate the “good” people of the Federal Agency or the U.S. Postal Service, which is a “bad” thing that “good” people should not be allowed to do, because it is a good bad thing in a bad good world.

It is all well and good to write the narrative of one’s life, and to live it in accordance with the prose and poetry (or lack thereof) which we embrace; but to write another’s life — it makes one pause, hesitate and move with trepidation. For, we ask ourselves: Of what right do we have? Is that best for the other person? We make such a mess of our own lives; what burden of responsibility must we undertake in order to shoulder the writing of another’s life? But that is precisely what we do when we have children, isn’t it?

Without any direction, few examples (assuming the author is one of the fortunate ones who had good parents in which to mirror a paradigm of reflective and transference of constructive behavior), and certainly no blueprint to follow, we blindly accept the unformed clay of humanity’s beginnings, and assume the responsibility of creating and conforming an unfinished product to determine the future course of one’s community, the greater society, and the historical relevance of an expanding civilization.

Gee, that sounds easy enough. And though we may have made complete messes of our own lives, we somehow believe that we have “rights” and first privileges when it comes to control, command and conforming consolidation concerning creativity confounding colorful conceptual constructs in casting the mold (sorry, but the alliteration didn’t hold for the last couple of words in the sequence).

Then, of course, there comes a time when such narration of another’s upbringing begins to recede, until finally, cessation through maturity, rebelliousness or separation of ways comes to fruition; and the next generation of messes left undone continues in a perpetural progression of regressive deterioration.

Prison workers and correctional officers must feel this way, as they are daily attempting to write the life of others by restraining and reformulating (or trying to) those very failures that were allowed because of priority of rights. But beyond raising children, how many of us possess the opportunity, or responsibility, of writing another’s life, and if we do, how seriously do we undertake that project?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who must file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the writing of another’s life must be undertaken despite that “other” life being one’s own.

In doing so, objectivity must be embraced, and this is often a difficult task, if not an impossible one. For, in formulating a Federal Disability Retirement case, the narration of proving one’s evidence by a preponderance of the evidence must reflect a standard of objectivity on SF 3112A, Applicant’s Statement of Disability, and must not meander into a diatribe of one’s own musings and meaningless messes.

Writing one’s own life is difficult enough; writing another’s life, when that other life is the one which is owned by one’s own life, is beyond being a writer’s hardship, but a necessity nonetheless if the Federal or Postal worker wants to prepare, formulate and file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application through OPM. But, then, we were all great successes as parents, weren’t we?

But that we could just write the narrative of our life, reflecting briefly upon our past, describing the present condition of being, but most importantly, to carefully craft the anticipated future of our lives in process. What is revealed from one’s past is telling of a person’s character; of the present, a manifestation of the compass of one’s heart; and to the narrative of one’s future? If the cultivation of one’s soul is the essence of the teleological process of life, the content of what we insert into the delineated poetry of future actions will uncover the truth in being of our damaged and tortured souls.

Would the script include fame and fortune? Encounters with the common and ordinary, or of the arrogant dismissal of all but the beautiful and fortunate? Would money always be written into the narrative of a future life, or ignored and instead replaced by peculiarities of fantasies, such as time travel, the ability to fly, or defiance of mortality and vanquishing of fear?

What one wishes for, like the genie who grants the dreams of youth, casts aside the veil we walk about with, and reveals all. But the operative concept often overlooked is not about a crafted life; rather, that “extra” descriptive adverb which denotes painstaking caution and conscientious execution: How does one “carefully” craft a life? For, when wishes are offered and granted without constraint, the crafting itself becomes cast away as a mere byproduct and of irrelevant concern, like the human detritus flung out from a window of a speeding car down the highway of reckless disregard.

The care that one takes in crafting a life — now, that is an undertaking few of us attend to, despite every opportunity at every turn in the linear sequence of even the ordinary life of an individual.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers, of course, who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of the Federal or Postal employee’s positional duties, that opportunity is offered in a limited and defined manner — in the form of 2 pathways.

First, by being required to write one’s narrative on SF 3112A, Applicant’s Statement of Disability (where the Federal or Postal employee must describe, delineate and prove a sliced portion of one’s life concerning the medical condition and its impact upon one’s capacity and ability to perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job); and Second, by preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application and submitting it through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset — thereby formulating the narrative which will determine the future course of one’s life and livelihood.

No, in either case, the Federal or Postal employee will not be able to receive a genie’s grant of unfettered wishes and requests; but that was always the thoughtless residue of a childhood fantasy, anyway.

For, in the end, the carefully crafted life is not one which has any room for the misspent daydreams of a forlorn childhood; rather, the truly substantive content of a carefully crafted life necessarily involves the Triumvirate of the T: Trials, Triumphs, and some sprinkling of Tragedies; just refer back to Shakespeare, or of Milton and Melville; anything else was merely the storybook fairytales of a bygone memory left behind in the dustbin of a forgotten era.

Seven False Myths about OPM Disability Retirement

1) I have to be totally disabled to get Postal or Federal disability retirement.
False: You are eligible for disability retirement so long as you are unable to perform one or more of the essential elements of your job. Thus, it is a much lower standard of disability.

2) My injury or illness has to be job-related.
False: You can get disability even if your condition is not work related. If your medical condition impacts your ability to perform any of the core elements of your job, you are eligible, regardless of how or where your condition occurred.

3) I have to quit my federal job first to get disability.
False: In most cases, you can apply while continuing to work at your present job, to the extent you are able.

4) I can't get disability if I suffer from a mental or nervous condition.
False: If your condition affects your job performance, you can still qualify. Psychiatric conditions are treated no differently from physical conditions.

5) Disability retirement is approved by DOL Workers Comp.
False: It's the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) the federal agency that administers and approves disability for employees at the US Postal Service or other federal agencies.

6) I can wait for OPM disability retirement for many years after separation.
False: You only have one year from the date of separation from service - otherwise, you lose your right forever.

7) If I get disability retirement, I won't be able to apply for Scheduled Award (SA).
False: You can get a Scheduled Award under the rules of OWCP even after you get approved for OPM disability retirement.